[mal10c]

Yeah that's a good question and like most things in life, things aren't black and white. In terms of unconscious bias, I'm not sure how to answer that. I look for talent, professionalism, and attitude. That's it.

In terms of what a person can do vs how they happened to interview - that's a fun challenge. I tend to be extremely honest with a candidate, letting him know exactly who we are, what we do, and what types of challenges to expect. As I'm talking through that, I can usually tell if they have that engineering spark. If I really have a tough time trying to decide if they know their stuff, I'll draw a problem on the board and see if they can solve it - usually a problem we've recently solved ourselves. I also call references, which sort of helps. Hiring is a gamble and fortunately in my case, it tends to work out. It's rare, but every so often I misread someone and find out after they start that they aren't as far along as I thought. When that happens, I provide them with a mentor or offer to be one myself - or I relearn their skillset and then write proposals that highlight their abilities. In the extremely rare cases an employee can't/won't grow, I'll have an honest and polite conversation with them and then part ways.

When an employee starts here, they join a "work family." We look out for one another and push each other to learn. I tend to focus on my employees interests and skillset, then design customer solutions around those. That has worked really well for decades now and customers keep coming back!